


The last remain

by devilcode



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Background Ionius and Duke Aegir and Arundel, Gen, Hubert's convinced he has no trauma whatsoever, Pre-Canon, The Black Eagles are not okay, Trauma all around, Very vague discussion of human experimentation and torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26852551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilcode/pseuds/devilcode
Summary: What was the point of trying, if everything was a lie?orEdelgard inadvertently rescues Hubert from himself.For Hubert Week, Day 2: Failure/Faith
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 11
Kudos: 34
Collections: Hubert Week 2020





	The last remain

**Author's Note:**

> Hubert Week, Day 2: **Failure/Faith**
> 
> _I saw fire consume the trusting  
>  With the victims still naive  
> And so they bleed  
> And so they bleed_
> 
> So this is absolutely not proofread. I'll do that when it isn't 11am and I don't have to be at work in seven hours.

**Garland Moon, 1173**

“By the Saints, boy, what is the matter with you?!”

The thick oak door of his bedroom did little to impede his father’s harsh tone. Hubert sat against the wall, uncaring as a stone beneath the waves, as the words washed over him. The glyph shimmering before his hands was small and weak, and looked rather off in a way the boy couldn’t quite pinpoint—not that it terribly bothered him. Magic study was merely a half-hearted way to pass the hours, these days.

“I have patiently endured your disrespect. I accept your contempt as my burden, but I will not tolerate you extending such to your tutors!”

 _Hm,_ Hubert idly noted. _Father actually sounds quite upset. Almost distressed._ Perhaps, in the first year of his rebellion, he might have drawn joy from that. He didn’t bother expending the energy to even care that much, instead recasting the petite glyph exercise. The lines sparked in the air, but nothing resembling a half-decent spell manifested.

“Fire and brimstone, Hubert, Gregor is nearly at your level! A boy five years your junior! If you are going to so flagrantly neglect your studies, at least have the _decency_ to attend and pretend to pay attention! You are my heir! If you don’t prepare yourself—”

“I won’t be able to be able to manage an empty palace?” Hubert drolly butted in. Dismissing the glyph, he drew up a new one; the basic building block of Fire, this time. “Or are you going to move the Duke in after His Majesty d—”

A thunderous _CRACK!_ from the door cut Hubert off, and this time, a ghost of a bitter smirk curled on his face. That door was solid oak; his father would feel that for days to come, if it didn’t outright break his hand. Hubert knew from experience. No words followed. Was his father cradling an injured fist? Or seething at the door? He continued in the silence.

“Name Gregor your heir if you care that much.”

Footsteps, sharp clicks fading to nothing. Seething, then. At least Hubert had his insolence. Insolence was all he had left.

He believed his father had cared for Ionius IX, once. Or maybe even that had been all part of the elaborate, farcical fairytale his childhood was spun from. Not that it mattered. Hubert blankly watched the uncooperative fire glyph sputter pathetically. Just like the creeping Brionac ivy, he would quietly strangle whatever life he could from this household. It was petty, perhaps even futile. His younger brother certainly seemed to be flourishing in this new era of the Adrestian Empire that his father had helped create, one ruled by the Great Houses and a decorative puppet. Perhaps it wasn’t Gregor’s fault; he’d been so young, that day. Too young to fully comprehend the significance and shame of their father’s actions. And now, this new era would be all the boy grew up knowing.

Hubert wouldn’t forget. Not on his life. He wouldn’t let the Imperial family be the only one that suffered. The roots of a violent feeling cracked the surface of his apathy, and the faulty fire sigil twisted and realigned itself, it’s failing embers breathing in new life and burning darkly.

_He wouldn’t forget._

_What else was there to do anymore, but wander halls he had pointlessly memorized? Ghost along servants’ passages for those attending a despondent and heartbroken prisoner? To aimlessly stalk the forgotten corridors charted only by House Vestra that existed between the walls and within the bones of the palace?_

_The dark no longer held anything to fear. There was no more purpose in fear, the same as anything else. Hubert wandered those forgotten corridors with only the dim light of his neglected magic, relying far more on the touch of the walls than the poor illumination it provided._

_They were coming back, slowly. The Imperial princes and princesses. One by one, three in total thus far, and each in a casket._

_“This isn’t right.”_

_A murmur, scarcely audible though the false wall. Hubert paused; he couldn't recall where his aimless feet had led him. It felt like he’d been wandering the dark for hours.  
“I understand your discontent, my brother, but the Minister has spoken.”_

_“This goes against a thousand years of tradition. Enbarr’s bishop has always presided over the death rites of the family blessed by Seiros herself.”_

_Oh? Attention and mind suddenly sharp, Hubert closed his eyes and leaned his ear closer._

_“So we have. But it is Adrestia that decrees her traditions; if the Minister of Religion grants the privilege to the Bishop of the Western Church, it is our duty to respect such, brother. All we can do is pray for the departed.”_

_Silence. One stretched so that Hubert thought the holy men departed; he was about to carry on himself when the quiet words seized his heart._

_“...You know that there is no disease that behaves this way, Your Excellency.”_

\---

**Great Tree Moon, 1174**

White magic was founded on absolute, unwavering conviction; utter trust in the forces that be, and guiding—not controlling—that energy as a riverbed guides a river.

Black magic was founded on complete understanding. A practitioner manipulated the forces that be with artisan precision, equations and masterful control transforming ambient energy into an orderly new form.

Dark magic was different. Dark magic was _alive._

Perhaps that was a misnomer. It lived in the same manner as a fire; it spread, it consumed, it unbiasedly devoured. It was knowledge. It was power. And yet, not evil, despite how superstition framed it and polite society at large frowned upon it. And just like fire, for all its destructive force, it could have other, beneficial applications. Fire warmed. Fire cooked. Fire tempered and transformed. Any mind could learn the way of reason magic, or faith magic. Not everyone could successfully learn dark magic; fire was difficult to produce, unless you already held an ember in the hearth.

No, it was the twisted hearts of mankind that were so sorely tempted by dark magic. The knowledge, the power, the potential tempted them into more than they could handle, until the flames grew too wild and fueled itself with the caster, instead of the other way around. Despite their shared roots, black magic differed from dark magic in that it was cold, logical, objective. Formulaic. The disproportionate percentage of mad dark mages was no exaggeration; those sorcerers and sorceresses that did not respect nor tend their flames grew to be consumed by them.

And then, there were those that intentionally fanned them.

Hubert realized, one day, why his black magic had failed to progress these last few years. It wasn’t apathy that plagued him: it was numbness. A shell of it, insulating something much deeper from the outside world. Had it been a simple lack of emotion, his Reason would have flourished.

No. It wasn’t a lack of emotion that numbed his heart and soul. It was _too much_ of it.

Rage burned in the center of Hubert’s very being, day and night. Ceaselessly. It whispered dreams of arson in his ears, and with its guidance, dark magic came to him in a way no skill ever had. He hadn’t found an ember to foster. He’d found an inferno.

His fury boiled his blood into tar, and as Hubert stared into potential, potential stared back.

There was an intoxicating, twisted joy in teetering on that precipice, that answer to powerlessness. It would take extensive study, of course, just like anything else, but the yawning void of potential promised results. 

House Vestra had failed the Imperial family, and House Hresvelg burned around them for it. One day, Hubert dreamed, he’d build a pyre from that great failure. One day, rage whispered, he would martyr those traitors with the flames.

Perhaps Hubert should have thanked his father for plunging him into the jarring truth of their hellish reality, where good men didn’t prevail, chivalry was a fairytale, and the Goddess ignored the screams of the weak. After an adjustment period, it was so very eye-opening.

_”Your Excellency. I can abide this no longer. I’ve written to the Archbishop and Minister of Religion.”_

_“I’ve told you, such decisions are not ours—”_

_“No disease so methodically selects its victims so routinely. Not like poison does.”_

_“....Brother—”_

_“No disease, nor poison, causes wounds like that.”_

_Silence. Then, the Bishop’s voice, choked with dawning horror. “You distrubed the body.”_

_“I had to. Please forgive me, and understand. My conscience could not permit me to stand by.”_

\---

**Blue Sea Moon, 1174**

_THUMP. THUMP. THUMP._

“Get dressed, Hubert. You’re needed at the palace.”

His father’s voice sounded different, today. It was stripped of frustration, and the very sound of professionalism. Only his heavy hand banging against the door hinted at any impatience for the incoming fight.

The variation wasn’t enough for Hubert to care. He didn’t dignify the summons with an answer.

Three thumps again, an hour later. This time irritation stained his father’s voice.

“ _Now,_ boy, or I’m leaving without you.”

Well. That decided that. Hubert returned his focus to the glyph darkly burning above him from where he laid on his bed; the orb of Mire held steady. This was the longest he’d ever been able to manifest one, and his mind burned with the effort.

He heard the carriage rattling off through the rain hardly five minutes later. Breath hissed through Hubert’s teeth as his limits forced him to release the Mire, and the sigil fizzled out.

“...Hubert.”

The boy paused. A quiet voice, and he hadn’t heard anyone approach his room.

“Please, heed your father just this once. It’s… important.” His mother fell silent. Hubert didn’t move, his attention rapt for any sound of departure. “I believe… _you_ will find it important.”

He waited, hardly breathing. Hubert didn’t know how long for; she’d left, at some point. And so he laid alone in the cloud-shrouded morning darkness with his breath and his thoughts.

Hubert… did not hate his mother, even if he held her responsible for her complacency. She was so, so very keen, and only spoke when she deemed necessary, but out of a taciturn nature than any kind of outside restriction.

She never intervened between Hubert and his father. Something was different.

After another stretch of unmeasured time, he rose, and dressed.

\--

Of course, missing the carriage meant he had to ride through the rain. The captain of his father’s guard was happy to escort Hubert, even if the feeling wasn’t mutual; the pleasant captain feigned ignorance to Hubert’s resentment of him, and never hinted any ill will despite the scar Hubert had left on his jaw that fateful night years ago.

The storm easily found its way under Hubert’s cloak during the short ride through the hills and orchards between the Vestra manor and palace proper. He did his best to shake the water from his outgrown hair more out of irritation than any attempt to appear more than minimally presentable. His escort insisted on hovering about the palace’s reception all in the event his young master decided this was a short trip, and Hubert didn’t bother trying to dissuade him.

It was another matter entirely to figure out where his father had gone. A Vestra’s training let them stalk the expansive palace like a wolf in its own territory, or a spider upon her web, sensitive to any disturbance in the flow of the environment. The Marquis could be anywhere, tending to anything.

But for once, locating the disturbance wasn’t difficult. Guards stood by in unusual places along the grand gilded-and-crimson-draped front halls. Servants murmured uncertainty where they hovered by doors to the branching palace wings, and a steward outside the throne room nervously checked the time as his eyes flickered across his schedule. There were more guards, here, standing in formation on either side of the approach.

Personal soldiers. Not the Imperial Guard. Not House Vestra’s.

That was Arundel’s crest on their tabards.

Something seized in Hubert’s throat, the feeling more apprehension than hope, and tinged with old anger as cold, sleepless nights alone in the wildness flooded back to Hubert’s mind. He pushed forward, a faint sense of urgency hurrying his steps along. Arundel’s soldiers watched him like horrible gargoyles, but remained still, seeing as the two Imperial Guard posted outside offered Hubert no obstacle.

The scene spread within felt like some vicious mockery, and that feeling in his throat began to rise as bile and rage as the blood in his veins boiled into tar: his father, tall, still, silent flanking the throne; the vile Duke blathering delusional grandeur opposite the Marquis; His Majesty Ionius IX, kneeling before his empty throne, a quiet sob just audible; the only new addition was Arundel, standing proudly aside, watching the scene before him with a predator’s eyes. And…

There, in Ionius’ arms. A slight figure with short white hair, thin arms wrapped about him and face buried in his shoulder. His father’s impassive eyes silently flickered up to meet Hubert’s challenging gaze.

But what froze Hubert in his tracks was the Emperor’s soft words, just as quiet as his sob.

“You’ve come back to me,” he croaked, “my little El.”

\---

_”...Pardon me, but may I ask your name?”_

_“Excuse my abrupt appearance, Your Excellence. My name is Sivert; I will be filling in for Brother Brant from this day forward.”_

_“I’m… sorry, but Brother Brant spoke nothing of a departure.”_

_“If his summons was as sudden as my reassignment, I’m sure he would have notified you if he could. From what I heard in passing, Minister Varley wished to hear his complaints in person most urgently. I was sent to assist you in your daily ceremonies in his absence, Bishop. It’s quite a journey; he may not return for some time.”_

_“I… understand. ...Thank you, Brother Sivert…”_

\---

The next hour passed in a haze. His father had barked at him to stop standing around like a simpleton, and in his shock, Hubert had obediently gone to stand beside his father. As he did, the girl in Ionius’ arms peered up over his shoulder.

There was hatred in those violet eyes.

Edelgard. She lived. She _lived_. The only one to not return in a casket to be quietly shuffled off to the mausoleum after a private ceremony.

Hubert could hardly hear what anyone was saying. His ears rang, his head spun. The vile Duke vomited an endless stream of some kind of praise, some ramble about greatness. Lord Arundel stood around like a judgemental falcon, watching a field of mice. At some point, someone said something about the long journey, and the group shuffled off to different areas after the blatant dismissal. Edelgard was sent to rest, the tearful Emperor refusing to leave her side.

When Hubert came back to himself, he was seated in his father’s palace apartments, a space set aside for the Minister of the Imperial Household for when work grew too demanding to even manage the ten minute ride to the Vestra estate. A glass clicked on the table before him; Hubert took a shaking drink of water before he even realized it was his father that had set it there.

There was no space in his mind to even entertain the thought that he’d been quietly cooperating with his reprehensible father for the last while. _Edelgard_ was _alive_.

It could have been minutes after Hubert set down the empty glass, or another hour, before his father spoke. He couldn’t tell anymore.

“Are you still so unmotivated to manage an empty palace?”

Hubert glanced up, more dumbly than he would have liked. His father gazed down, his matching jade eyes as stoic and impassive as his voice.

Hubert couldn’t bring himself to answer.

\---

**Verdant Rain Moon, 1174**

Edelgard would not speak to him.

Every day after her return, he woke early and promptly accompanied his father to the palace, trailing after him as he had faithfully so many years ago. Edelgard’s silence wasn’t for Hubert’s lack of trying; it quickly became clear she was unwell. Every day for the first two weeks, she’d remained in her room with only the Emperor and an old maid she’d known since birth admitted in. Still, Hubert arrived every day, to wait outside the Imperial family’s residence. At night, after trudging home with his father, Hubert settled in his room with books he hadn’t touched in an embarrassingly long time. Too quickly, it became clear exactly how far behind he’d fallen in his studies for a noble of his age; too-late nights of dark magic were replaced with too-late nights of arithmetic and history and law.

No one mentioned Edelgard’s white hair. It was as if every breathing individual in the palace swore an unspoken and mutual oath to make the topic taboo. Just the same as no one mentioned the too full mausoleum. 

Lord Arundel frequented the halls of the palace. The Duke stayed for some time in Enbarr, as well, more than he typically did as Prime Minister. They talked so very often, and every glance of them exchanging words set a chill in Hubert’s spine. How did no one think it odd? Lord Arundel… had he not fled, that fateful night, fearing him a target of the coup for his sister’s marriage to the Emperor? And yet, here he stood, speaking amicably with the chief conspirator himself, like they spoke over tea in their own home, discussing what great things Volkhard would do with his regency before the man departed at the end of the month.

When Edelgard finally did begin venturing beyond her own chambers, it wasn’t for long. Brief ventures into the gardens between rain showers, before the light began to bother her eyes. Dining with the Emperor, sometimes privately, and sometimes with their guests.

But it was wrong, all horribly wrong. Even beyond her hair, her apparent frailty, there was so little recognizable of his liege. She did not smile. She did not follow her whims to the nearest adventure. She didn’t challenge the world around her.

Edelgard sat quietly, watching. Always watching, with eyes too sharp and scornful, shoulders tense.

Hubert was not spared that scorn. He didn’t need to ask why. He’d failed her, the same as the rest of House Vestra.

\---

**Horsebow Moon, 1174**

Hubert did not relent. Every morning, he accompanied his father. Every day, he waited. Every night, he made up for lost time. Neither of his parents commented on his sudden change in temperament.

Nor of his lady’s. If they knew something—anything—about what transpired, they held their silence. Hubert could spare enough trust to believe they’d tell him the truth, anyway.

Edelgard was growing stronger. She ventured from her room more often, for longer, spending more time in the gardens than where else. Her hair was almost to her shoulders, now, even if her skin was still too pale.

And everywhere she went, she carried a dagger. Yet another one of those unspoken topics no one ever mentioned.

Whenever Hubert tried to approach, she found excuses to be elsewhere. Shadowing her from afar would have to do. For now.

As the nights passed, as the darkness grew longer with the approaching winter, Hubert’s mind spun more and more with fabrications of what on this cursed land could have happened. The snippets of unsettling conversations he’d eavesdropped on between the resident priests did his imagination no favors.

\---

**Wyvern Moon, 1174**  
Enough was enough.

Edelgard was spending more time outside with the quiet urgency of someone chasing the fleeting hours of sunlight, but without taking heavier coats as the air began to chill. If she wouldn’t let him approach, then may his lady forgive him, Hubert couldn’t give her that choice.

He had to know. Something. _Anything._

He had to apologize.

Moving silently still came to him, even after years of neglect of his skills. The gardens were an expansive project of cleverly placed hedges and trees to seemingly create rooms of their own, and even more cleverly placed walls and glass to shelter the plants from wind and retain the heat of the sun in colder months. It’s this clever design that allowed it to cling to verdancy for slightly longer than the orchards as their leaves began to shift.

Edelgard seemed to follow the shifting colors of the leaves as she approached the fringes of the garden, eyes skimming along the foliage dancing in the gentle breeze. She drifted further and further, almost absently; it was the perfect opportunity for Hubert to close their distance, between her distraction and their growing distance from the palace proper.

But when he rounded the final ivy-clad wall marking the garden from the orchards, something violently punched the air from his lungs and threw him back against that wall.

Wheezing, Hubert forced his eyes to focus through the throbbing at the back of his skull, looking down to see Edelgard’s small forearm barred across his torso, right below his solar plexus. For as frail as she looked since her return, the girl had thrown him against the wall with more strength than Hubert expected from someone his own size. He’d forgotten exactly how hard the Crest of Seiros could hit.

“Did your father send you to follow me?” she hissed.

Hubert gracefully answered with a sputtering cough, before choking out, “N-no, of course not. Lady Edel—”

“You don’t get to call me that anymore.” His heart sunk as her eyes narrowed. “Not after what happened. Do you have any idea what you and your family have done?”

No. No, he didn’t. But the accusation turned his marrow to lead, and if Edelgard released her pin that instant, Hubert wasn’t sure he could stay standing. He’d failed her. He’d failed her siblings. Faces he’d never see again, laughs he’d never hear. Even despite Edelgard’s proof of life, her laugh seemed lost, as well.

Who could blame her, after the parade of dead into the Imperial crypts?

Hubert tried to speak. Tried to stammer out some form of apology, to beg for her forgiveness around the shame choking his throat. For the first time in three years, the fire hollowing out his soul dimmed. The rage that had sustained him—consumed him—retreated and an exhaustion beyond his meager years smothered what was left.

Edelgard didn’t tolerate long of his stammering. The scorn in her features slid into disgust before she released him with a last shove.

“I don’t want to see you following me again.”

Even without the pressure of her arm, Hubert couldn’t move. Then, suddenly, something snapped—he was ten again, with nothing but ice and panic in his veins, and Hubert surged forward to snatch Edelgard’s wrist.

“Wait, _please—_ ”

The world slowed to a crawl. The instant his hand closed about her wrist, tension ripped through Edelgard’s body and she lashed out with a wordless scream, tearing her arm free. Hubert saw her lunge coming this time, but couldn’t—or wouldn’t—move in time. The girl tackled him to the ground, and before Hubert knew it, she was kneeling on his chest, a blade against his throat, and something horribly wild in her eyes.

And she trembled. In anger, in fear, Hubert couldn’t tell. He didn’t _care_. How had everything twisted to this point? How had the world warped and broken so thoroughly, to bring his bold young liege to this, to make such a failure of the Vestra’s golden boy, to maim both their families so? From here, he could see how Edelgard’s sleeve twisted about her arm, bearing pink, angry scars.

Hubert was too tired to fight whatever was in Edelgard’s eyes. The knife’s edge pressed a searing line into his skin when he swallowed. His eyes drifted shut.

“There was nothing I could do. I—I was supposed to protect you.” His voice sunk to a hoarse whisper. “It’s my fault. I don’t deserve your forgiveness. ...I’m sorry.”

He tilted his head back further into the grass, bearing his throat.

Nothing happened.

Wind whistled through the orchard’s leaves. An eagle screeched somewhere in the sky. The wan sunlight hardly warmed his face. Then Edelgard’s dagger clacked and rolled off his collarbone as her breath started coming in harsh pants, the timing of her breath all wrong. When he opened his eyes, hers were screwed shut while she fought off whatever she was seeing in her mind. His heart twisted, but Hubert didn’t dare touch her, not after how she’d reacted to being grabbed.

After a minute, after an eternity, Edelgard’s breathing seemed to be under control again, or controlled enough. She hesitantly shuffled off his chest, kneeling in the grass beside him, head hung. Just as hesitantly, Hubert sat up, watching.

“...Hubert…”

She leaned into his shoulder, and this time Hubert didn’t think twice—didn’t think at all—before wrapping her in his arms; she was too small, even for a girl of twelve. He could hardly understand his own name around the way her voice violently trembled with the rest of her.

It’s only when her fingers curled in his shirt that Hubert realized that his lady wasn’t shaking with fear or anger—at least, not now.

She shook with relief.

\---

Edelgard had no issues with him trailing her like a shadow after that. Hubert hardly let her out of his sight. When he asked his father for his own room at the palace, all the Marquis said was a mild comment about Hubert taking his work seriously.

Two more weeks passed before Edelgard told him about what transpired; one week before she was ready, and another yet before she felt sufficiently away from prying eyes and ears to speak of it. She told him of the cells, the rats, the blood, the screams. How she’d been the last to arrive, and how two other siblings had already been gone. She spoke of horrors and needles and knives and masked mages. She whispered about the Crest of Flames and theDuke’s grand scheme to forge the greatest emperor—and of monsters that could steal people’s faces.

About how one had stolen her uncles—maybe. If he hadn’t been that way to start with. Edelgard didn’t know for sure. Hubert was under the impression she no longer cared which; the point stood that she couldn’t trust anyone. After being gone for so long, anyone could be those creatures. And even if they _weren’t_ Duke Aegir had proven his reach far and powerful, with more than enough coin to sway most people’s hearts. And now that the Empire was all but his…

Hubert couldn’t fault Lady Edelgard for reacting to him as she did. Especially when she couldn’t be sure if he had been in league with his father’s betrayal.

They fell into a long silence, after that, sitting back to back in one of the fruit orchards as leaves fell around them. For all that he’d endured silence these last three years, this one was the closest thing he’s felt to peace in too long. Edelgard seemed to feel the same way.

The wary tension hadn’t left her; it still curled in Edelgard’s small frame, ready to lash out like a viper, but her jagged edges began to dull. Fury still bubbled like boiling tar beneath Hubert’s skin—perhaps now more than ever, in the face of the truth—but this time, it tempered him. How reckless he’d been, Hubert mused, dancing on that razor’s edge of madness and pain to the tempo of a force that so many wiser than him had fallen to. Hubris, nothing but raw hubris. At least he could see such, now, with someone to anchor him.

“This must stop,” Edelgard murmured. “This madness can’t go on.”

“Hm?” It took Hubert a second to realize she wasn’t speaking of his brief descent into obsessive magical pursuit. 

“My—my family wasn’t the first one, Hubert.” Her sigh shuddered, but Edelgard’s voice remained firm. “They’ll keep doing it. Once they perfect it, they won’t stop at me. I’ll only be their ‘greatest creation’ for as long as they need me.” Her words were heavy with venom.

“And once they have access to the whole continent, to the Church’s artifacts… an even greater creation will no doubt come along.”

“But they need me until then. They have to.” From the slight movement against his back, Hubert could tell she shook her head. “If they didn’t—if they didn’t need _Adrestia_ —they would’ve attacked the Church a long time ago.”

Hubert hummed an acknowledgement, tabbing through the pages and pages of tactical literature currently crowding his mind. “They will prop you up to eliminate their enemies, and reserve their forces to eliminate what’s left at their leisure.”

“There has to be something we can do. Without the Church—”

Her thought process began to click into place. “—Crests could lose their divine status,” Hubert murmured. “And if you position yourself to eliminate them in that crucial moment…”

“We could end all this. We could free Fodlan.”

He didn’t answer immediately. Edelgard turned about to face him, by the crunching of the leaves, but Hubert didn’t do the same.

“It would place you in unbelievable danger.”

“That’s going to happen anyway. I’m their _weapon,_ remember?”

Hubert’s heart tightened in time with his fist, soil and fallen leaves crushing under his glove. He still didn’t dare look at her. His soul was still too raw.

Hah. Too raw—to think, he’d only staged a three-year tantrum in his family’s own home, while his liege suffered unspeakable horrors, and yet Hubert felt like the exposed one. Pathetic.

“...I can’t lose you again.”

Silence. Then, her small hand settled atop his fist. 

“You won’t let it come to that. Hubert, please. I—I can’t abide a world where this could happen to another. And it _will_. We can bring Fodlan to a new dawn with the power they’re hellbent on giving me.” Her hand tightened over his. “I will not be their puppet. But… I can’t do it alone.” 

He’d already failed her once.

“...or do you not believe in me?” 

He wouldn’t fail her again.

“Lady Edelgard, you crawled back unbroken from the maws of hell itself. I believe in you more than anyone. And I will stand beside you, wherever this path takes you.”

 _Never_ again.

**Author's Note:**

> -Despite the included snippets, I wrote most of this with Funeral of Flowers on loop for six hours.
> 
> -So this was supposed to be about ~2k words. What the fuck even happened. RIP Brother Brant.
> 
> -Devil, you all might be thinking, do you think about anything other than the Insurrection? Ahahahaha, no. Insurrection thoughts, all day, every day. I can't imagine Hubert NOT going through an intensely angsty pre-teen phase in the years immediately after.


End file.
